Maurice de Saxe (1696-1750), Marshal-General of France and
notorious rake, was the great-grandfather of Amandine Lucile Aurore Dupin,
better known as the author George
Sand.

Napoleon’s Royal Italian Army began his Russian
Campaign in 1812 with 27,000 men, of whom only about a thousand returned home.

Having conquered Sardinia in 237 B.C., Tiberius
Sempronius Gracchus brought back so many slaves that the phrase “Sardinians for
sale” became the Roman equivalent of “a dime a dozen.”

Winston Churchill acquired his taste for Havanas
while a reporter with the Spanish Army
fighting the Cuban insurgents in 1895, his preferred brands being Romeo y Julieta and La Aroma de Cuba;
the latter are no longer available, but the RJs
are, now made in the Dominican Republic, and the line includes a special
stogie named the “Churchill” in honor of history’s greatest cigar smoker.

Although King Oscar II of Sweden (r., 1872-1907). the great-grandson of
French Marshal Jean-Baptiste
Bernadotte and his wife Desiree Clary, sometime sweetheart of a certan Corsican
adventurer, is best known in the U.S. for the brand of sardines that bear
his name, he played an important role in avoiding war in 1905 when Norway
declared independence from his kingdom.

Under the conscription laws introduced in Prussia
early in the eighteenth century, “civil servants, miners, weavers, sailors,
stable hands, shepherds, and postmen, the owners of farms, breweries, and inns;
the sons of higher civil servants, university teachers, estate holders,
merchants, and factory owners; the sons of civil servants, if engaged in
studies, trade, or the administration of large estates; religious minorities [on
payment of commutation]; the seven largest cities in the kingdom, wholesale;
and more or less all lands west of the River Elbe” were exempt from the draft,
as were members of the nobility, who were, however, expected to serve as
officers.

Although they did arrive too late to lend a hand
at Marathon, according to Herodotus, in 490 B.C., 2,000 Spartans arrived in Attica
“on the third day after leaving Sparta,” covering a distance of 150 miles in less
than 72 hours, for an average march of more than 50 miles per day.